“You can take anything you want,” replied Fenoglio. “Seeds, runners, cuttings, so Violante told me to tell you – anything, if you’ll persuade your daughter to keep Violante herself company in the future and not her husband.”
Roxane looked at the seeds in her hand and then let a few of them fall lightly to the flower bed.
“It won’t work. My daughter hasn’t listened to me for years. She loves the life up here, although she knows that I don’t, and she’s loved Cosimo ever since she first saw him ride out of the castle gate on his wedding day. She was barely seven then, and after that her heart was set on coming here to the castle, even if it meant working as a maid. If Violante hadn’t once heard her singing down in the kitchen she’d probably still be emptying chamber pots, feeding kitchen scraps to the pigs, and sometimes stealing upstairs in secret to feast her eyes on the statues of Cosimo.
Instead, she became like Violante’s little sister . . wore her clothes, looked after her son, sang and danced for her like one of the strolling players, like her own mother. Not with Motley skirts and dirty feet, not sleeping by the roadside and carrying a knife to defend herself against vagrants trying to creep in under her blanket by night, but in silken clothes and with a soft bed to sleep in.
She wears her hair loose, all the same, just as I did, and she loves too much, exactly as I did. No,”
she said, placing the seeds in Fenoglio’s hand. “Tell Violante that much as I would like to help her, I can’t.”
The little girl looked at Fenoglio. Where was her mother now? “Listen,” he told Roxane. Her beauty took his breath away. “Take as many seeds as you like. They’ll grow and thrive in your fields much better than within these gray walls. Dustfinger has gone off with Meggie. I sent her a messenger. As soon as the man is back you’ll hear everything he has to tell: where they are now, how long they’ll stay away, everything!”
Roxane took the lavender from him again, picked a handful more, and carefully put them in the bag hanging from her belt. “Thank you,” she said. “But if I don’t hear from Dustfinger soon I shall set off in search of him myself. I’ve stayed here too often just waiting for him to come back safe and sound, and I can’t get it out of my mind that Basta is back!”
“But how will you find him? The last news I heard from Meggie was that they were making for a mill known as the Spelt-Mill. It’s on the far side of the forest in Argenta. That’s dangerous country!”
Roxane smiled at him, like a woman explaining the way of the world to her child. “It will soon be dangerous here, too,” she said. “Do you think the Adderhead won’t have heard by now that Cosimo is having swords forged day and night? Perhaps you should look around for some other place to do your writing, before the fiery arrows come raining down on your desk.”
Roxane’s mount was waiting in the Outer Courtyard of the castle. It was an old black horse, thin and going gray around the muzzle. “I know the Spelt-Mill,” she said, lifting the little girl up on the horse’s back. “I’ll ride past it, and if I don’t find them there I’ll try the Barn Owl’s place. He’s the best physician I know on either side of the forest, and he looked after Dustfinger as a boy.
Perhaps he may have heard news of him.”
Of course, the Barn Owl! How could Fenoglio have forgotten him? If Dustfinger ever had anything like a father, it was this man. He had been one of the physicians who went around with the strolling players from place to place, from market to market. Unfortunately, Fenoglio didn’t know much more about him.
Damn it all, he thought, how can you forget your own stories? And don’t try making your age an excuse.
“If you see Jehan, send him home,” said Roxane, as she swung herself up behind the girl on the horse. “He knows the way.”